I'm also a little bit sceptical of relying on a random private company, GitHub, to be the canonical data host.

Dependency and control.

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TFS probably was done by a sleep deprived individuum.
The point is the alarmingly high percentage of children affected in some countries, especially the US, combined with reasons and large scale effects.
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Thank you, your comments render a much better understanding on my side
However, let me add a few thoughts.
perceptions ... no continuous real-world sensors
To me, that sounds a lot like conceptual learning isolated from perception. YMMV
Though, I do not know whether "intelligent" behaviour may emerge without the challenges that a body full of sensors as well as (parallel) means to cope with these that is interfaced to a brain that (my view) on a high level (call it consciously, think focus of attention) is concentrating on controlling one task, namely generating "intention" or "goals".
Forgetting could be an actively decided optimization parameter, as opposed to a byproduct of capacity.
Which may occur in the "real world" as well, though presumably focussed in the realm of "emotions" (BTW, this raises the question how emotions interact with more or less cognitive processes).
not a constantly active information stream
Crucial, and I am fine with the whole paragraph, especially as you somehow emphasize the "tool" aspect, which gives you a lot more degrees of freedom compared to efforts to engineer some "reality".
Also, being self-destructive indicates "not intelligent"?
This is taken out of context, namely "immediate trust". My remark was triggered by an (admittedly dim) recall of a classification that Stegmüller made (K1, K2, K3 systems) with regard to teleological systems. IIRC, one can extend the scheme to a continuum from acting immediately in response to an input to tailoring the action to the outcome of building a "complete" model/simulation of the context (warning: recursion ahead).
I agree that suicide might be an "intelligent choice". Ethics and moral add yet another layer.
Besides, an artificial intelligence ...
You are probably better of if you call your envisioned system along the lines of "cognitive augmentation". This lowers expectations while still complex enough, shifts the focus from "basic" to "applied" (funding? I speculate "applied" has more appeal) and makes the goal scalable (creating backdoors when confronted with too many nontrivial problems) by redefinition of the target group.
Intelligence requires weariness? Intelligence negates meticulousness?The pursuit of goals is not intelligent?
For an autonomous system, which a tool is not, yes to both: sleep, fuzzyness.
It was not "pursuit of goals" but "follow instructions". Anyhow, with the "toolfocus", this is irrelevant.
Given proper sharing of context, instructions in natural language can be unambiguous
For practical purposes, yes. IMHO, theoretically, no (Gödel).

Disclaimer: I am only expressing my opinions here, which are based on what is left from working in the field in the 80ies and loosely following (more or less meager) development since then.

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So, more detail.
perfect recall

Conflicts with prioritizing if you have provisions for priority zero (forgetting, irrelevant if the link goes away or the information is erased).
could converse about its knowledge and thought processes
Telling more than we can know (Nisbett &Wilson, 1977, Psychological Review, 84, 231–259), protocol analysis, expert interviews: evidence that this is at least not always possible. My hypothesis is that too much metaprocessing would lead to a deadlock.
conversational feedback would have immediate application without lengthy retraining
Would imply that the system immediately trusts. Would probably be rather self destructive, thus not intelligent.
tirelessly and meticulously follow instructions given in natural language
The antithesis of intelligent behaviour?
So now I say that I see a recursive combinatorial explosion happening during conflict resolution.
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One of the few good things about getting older is that you can remember hearing the same hype before.

At least, sometimes, the hype spirals in a promising direction :)

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Mammalian brains tire, need sleep, do not have perfect recall, run things out of time order and convinces itself otherwise, take a long time to train, and has strong emotional needs.
Who has ruled out that these are preconditions?

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I'd love to have a system with perfect recall, could converse about its knowledge and thought processes such that conversational feedback would have immediate application without lengthy retraining, and could tirelessly and meticulously follow instructions given in natural language.

I see a combinatorial explosion at the horizon.

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Thank you. I shall try to give it a try when I am again more enabled.

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Thank you.
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http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/23/lumus-oe-31-optical-engine-turns-motorcycle-helmets-other-eyew/

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Millions of autonomous flying cars? That's such a pie-eyed fantasy as to be laughable.

How did the passenger pigeon manage navigation and collision avoidance?

Quote from Wikipedia: "One flock in 1866 in southern Ontario was described as being 1 mi (1.5 km) wide and 300 mi (500 km) long, took 14 hours to pass, and held in excess of 3.5 billion birds.".

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Resembles an Osprey, unit cost: appr. $70m.

Well.

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This one would even be vintage.

Image detail for -popular mechanics magazine cover july 1957
http://media-cache-ak1.pinimg.com/550x/b9/c3/5d/b9c35dd72fc746aedfd262d9f4fbc1d1.jpg

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we'd have to be dumb enough to allow discrimination based on genetics

Indeed, now that we have overcome discrimination based on skin colour or nationality for centuries.
nature vs nurture
On a side note, history shows that fascists lean to the "nature" side. Given the lack of states that develop fascist attitudes, we are definitely on the safe side here.
But given the patriot act and other current events, I'd say we can create a dystopian future for ourselves even if we stopped all scientific progress.
That is a problem of values and control, not science.
a billion times more likely to save your life ...
A strong hypothesis, well.

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